could of (was 'dialect in novels')

[Victoria Neufeldt]

Herb Stahlke wrote on Saturday, February 24, 2001 10:25 AM
>
> Auxiliary have brings up a variant on eye-dialect, one in which
> the spelling is conventional but the grammar not.  I come across
> "would of", "could of", etc. pretty regularly in student writing,
> and I've found it also in novels where the writer is portraying
> the speech of teenagers.  Since "third of" and "would have" end
> the same way phonetically, the substitution in our students' minds
> isn't surprising.  Using it to portray immature and perhaps less
> educated persons suggests some of the same demeaning intent that
> lies behind eye dialect.
>
> Herb

I have never come up with a satisfactory analysis of what exactly is
happening in these cases, or what to call the phenomenon.  It seems that if
a person writes the preposition 'of' instead of the auxiliary 'have' or even
its contraction, that person must be actually interpreting the word in
question as 'of' and not just doing a written version of misspeaking.  It
seems to be an unconscious thing though; they probably would not accept "I
of gone, you of gone", etc. in a conjugation of the past perfect tense of
'go'.  Maybe it's vaguely thought of as being part of a set phrase with
'could' or 'would' and not tied to the following past participle?  Or does
'of' have a new meaning and/or function to permit such a construction?  Are
there any other examples of this kind of thing?

Victoria

Victoria Neufeldt
1533 Early Drive
Saskatoon, Sask.
S7H 3K1
Canada